Why the teaching of affectionate behavior is needed
Everyone expresses affection in one of five ways: words of affirmation, gift-giving, quality time, acts of service, or physical touch. Personally, I don’t resonate with any of these. When it comes to words of affirmation I struggle with finding the right words, I prefer my alone time over interactions with other people, and I’m not too big on gift-giving either, the whole guessing what a person would want is something I would rather not do. Additionally, I don’t enjoy physical touch. It doesn’t matter how big or small the physical interaction may be I just would rather a person not invade my bubble. As I became more aware of myself, I used to think I was weird for not being affectionate. When people would try to hug me I would take the furthest step back I possibly could and a feeling of disgust would hover over me like a dark cloud. I then realized that my approach to emotion was just who I was based on my experiences in my early life. Trying to mold myself to “fit in” with an affectionate crowd felt forced and made me uncomfortable, so I stopped trying.
I believe that my standoffish nature stems from my relationship with my mother. When you take one physically absent parent and one emotionally absent parent you produce a child that tends to get overwhelmed by their emotions and struggles with the majority of her emotional encounters. It’s not just physical affection either, it is the struggle of verbally expressing for you feel because you don’t to seem weak or dependent and it also creates more of an internal battle as well. You take all of your problems, and it’s only so much a person can handle, and you keep them bottled up inside until you are in the middle of a mental breakdown. It happens so often that you find a way to deal with it and you somehow find yourself in an endless cycle of torture. Looking back, I would say that I didn’t struggle with this as a child because as a kid you’re taught to go to an adult about everything so the second-guessing feeling never crossed your mind as often as it does now that you’re a young adult; society has taught teens that when you get older you are responsible for everything, it’s not another persons job to look after you. This was constantly stated in my household and I believe it played a role in who I am today, so when I do have these emotional battles the last thing I want to do is run to another adult in hopes that they can soothe me.
I would say that the most traumatic thing I ever experienced out of all my experiences was my relationship with my mother. I believe that her troubled experiences during her youth and young adult years influenced the way she interacted with my siblings and me. The younger me didn’t think that there was anything wrong with the way my mother treated me and my siblings; I thought it was normal. The constant name-calling, harsh punishments, and constant discipline felt acceptable during the time. I believed that this was how all parents reacted when their child did something wrong. Looking back, I realize these actions were not normal. That whooping your child as a solution to their wrongdoings was abnormal. Children are going to be curious about things and want to ask a thousand questions, emotional outbreaks are normal. It’s important to find a sense of patience with a child, try to be more understanding of the fact that children are going to be children and that being mindful of your approach is very crucial when raising a kid. I just don’t think my mom had that growing up so she didn’t think it was important to adapt those traits when raising my siblings and me. This also led me to believe in the saying “A child is only seen and not heard” because when I did receive some type of punishment for things that I thought were not serious, the last thing on my mind was talking to my mother out of it because I know she would’ve told me to close my mouth.
My mother’s way of parenting not only affected me internally but also affected the way I interact with people, friendly or personal. To this day, there are also things that I can allow myself to go through, this can be talking about my feelings, hugging for a certain amount of seconds, being in closed spaces with another individual, or asking for basic help. Trying to go through with the given acts as well as many others is such a struggle but I do try to overcome this struggle because I don’t want this to be something that holds me back as the years progress, but I also don’t want to feel like I’m forcing myself to not seem “weird” to please others because at the end this is everyone’s first time at life and the things you deal with takes time. This saying also goes for how I view my relationship with my mother, I don’t think sees perfect; I believe that she’s human and she tried to be the best mother she could and that my experiences shared with her made me into the person that I am today, and I wouldn’t change anything. My traumatic experiences are very crucial in my plot because it lets you know how you want to be treated and how you should treat the next person.